


If Only...

by Lily1986



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU Skyeward, My own "What If...." storyline, framework fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 21:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily1986/pseuds/Lily1986
Summary: In the Framework, nothing is what it seems. What's real and what isn't? She's having a hard time letting someone go. A Skyeward call back to season one.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something that's been plaguing me since Tuesday after all the call backs they did. This is the one call back I want the show to address but they probably won't. So I decided to write it for my own amusement.

The mission was not to defeat Hydra a second time. Their mission coming into the Framework was only to save their friends. She didn’t think it’d be more complicated than that. But then she woke up in a bathtub with him in her bed. It would have been so easy if he’d just been an evil Hydra agent too but he wasn’t. He was her only ally within the framework- besides Jemma, who’d come in with her. No one else could be trusted. She knew that. Hell, she was going against her own nature trusting him but he’d proven time and again that he had her best interest at heart and she couldn’t overlook that no matter how much instinct told her that she should. Once a traitor, always a traitor, right?

Telling him about the Framework had been hard. But telling him that he was actually dead where she came from was harder. She could have kept that to herself. He didn’t need to know everything. She knows she’s manipulating him. She’s using his feelings for her against him again. She knows this. It’s just that for the first time, she actually feels guilty doing it.

She doesn’t even know what will happen once she and her friends get out of the Framework. She keeps asking Jemma but all she does is give her a look of sympathy with a whispered, “I don’t know.” 

She doesn’t blame Jemma for not knowing. She just wants some reassurance that this world will keep spinning once she’s no longer a part of it. That’s the real irony. She wants a world dominated by Hydra to keep spinning, because he exists within it. She knows she’s going to have to go soon but she just wants to go home knowing that there is an alternate universe out there where they got everything right between them. She needs to know that this universe where Grant Ward didn’t betray her will still exist even if she can never return to it. In this universe, he didn’t break her heart. He chose her and she loved him. But more importantly, he is still alive.

That was not the mission. But the more time a person spent inside the Framework, the more their perspective changes. What if the mission also changed?

-

“Hey.” She greeted him, walking into the armory inside the underground SHIELD base.

He looked up from the gun he was cleaning and smiled softly at her. “Hey.” He already knew that she wasn’t his girlfriend because she'd told him. He knows she’s not the same girl he’s been in love with for the last four years. He knows that. She knows it too. But somehow, he still looks at her as if she is and she keeps remembering how it felt to be on the receiving end of that look so long ago. “What’s up?”

“Mace,” she pointed at the direction she just came from. “He just wanted me to let you know the mission was a go. We’re going after May and Fitz at first light.”

He nodded. “Okay.” And just like that, his attention was back on the gun in his hands.

He was being distant. She could tell. She could always tell when he was keeping her at arm’s length.

“Um,” she stretched. “That means….”

“That your mission will be complete and you get to go home?”

She bit her lip, lowering her gaze.

“Daisy,” he started.

“Call me Skye.”

That startled him at first but he continued anyway. “Skye, if you’re worried, it’s going to be okay. Mace knows what he’s doing. He’ll help your friends and you’ll all get to go home soon.”

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Reassuring me,” she told him. “Ignoring the elephant in the room...”

“Which is…?”

“That we don’t know what happens to you when I do leave!”

He sighed, putting the gun down on the desk, and walked toward her. Placing his hands on her arms, he lowered his gaze to hers with a soft smile. “It doesn’t matter. None of this is real, right?”

“It feels real.” She mumbled. “I haven’t felt this real in a long time.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry.”

Looking up at him with confusion, she asked. “Why are you apologizing?”

“I just…” he cleared his throat, dropping his hands. “I don’t like seeing you like this. You… Her… You’re just different is all. She doesn’t look like she’s always carrying the weight of two worlds on her shoulders.”

Skye tried to smile. “I’m jealous of her. I’ve forgotten what that feels like.”

“I hope you get to feel it again soon.” He smiled softly. “Until then, I’ll keep you safe.”

The words startled her. Almost like she’d heard them before. And she had. She knew she had. But back then, she’d been terrified of him and had to pretend she wasn’t. This time, she genuinely believed him when he said that he would. She pulled him into a hug, breathing him in.

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Hey, Skye. Are you okay?”

“In the spirit of honesty, can I say no and you not ask questions?”

He pulled back. “What is it?”

She took a deep breath. “It’s just been a really long time since I’m so close to getting what I want.”

“What is it that you want?”

She bit her lip, repeating the same words he’d told her once. “What I want is to stay here with you and imagine the world outside doesn’t exist.”

He frowned. “But the world outside does exist.”

She closed her eyes, remembering this same conversation she shared with the version of him who betrayed her inside of a similar SHIELD bunker a lifetime ago. “I know.”

He cupped her face in his hands, leaning his forehead against hers. “I know you’re not her but, I really want to kiss you right now.”

She opened her eyes, pulling back to look at him. “What’s stopping you?”

“I didn’t want to just take…”

She interrupted him with her lips on his. It’d been so long since her lips had touched his. Years, even. And their last kiss was so tainted. It had been manipulative on her part. This kiss was real. Daisy Johnson wasn’t kissing him. In this moment, she truly was Skye all over again. She was Skye, girl with no last name.

Deepening the kiss, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him closer to her but he broke their kiss unexpectedly.

“Wait. Stop.”

Confused, she chased his lips until he put a few inches between them. Panting, she was out of breath. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want you to have any regrets when you leave this place.” He was breathless too. She could see in his eyes how much he wanted this. How much he wanted her.

Looking down, she took his hand in hers and intertwined their fingers. Then she looked up at him, confidently meeting his eyes, “I want this.”

Those three words were all it took for him to snap out of his daze and close the distance between them once again. Lifting her up, she wrapped her legs around his waist and he carried her back to the desk he’d been working on. He pushed everything off, hearing the gun he'd been cleaning land on the floor but they didn’t care. In that moment, they both just needed to feel each other. He laid her gently on the desk, trailing kisses from her lips to her jaw, down her neck.

She held his face in her hands pulling him back up to her lips, kissing him again.

-

Skye pulled her shirt on while her back was turned to him. She knew that for him, this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. In his world, they’d been together for years. He knew her body as intimately as he knew his own. He’d proven that just moments ago on the only desk in the room they were currently in. But this still felt new to her and she was grateful that he was giving her some privacy by turning his own back on her while she dressed.

She knew she should say something to him but what was she supposed to say? As far as she was concerned, this could only be a onetime thing. Where she was going, he couldn’t follow. It shocked her when she realized that she wanted him to. But in the world outside, Daisy Johnson didn't get what she wanted. She never has. 

When she was finished, she turned around to find him already fully dressed with his arms crossed, staring at the wall. She bit back a smile before clearing her throat, signaling to him that it was okay for him to turn around.

“About what just happened,” she started.

“You don’t have to,” he cut her off. “I understand.”

She blinked. _Someday, you’ll understand._

“I want you to know that this meant something.” She told him anyway. “For me, this is real.”

Walking toward her, he tucked some of her long hair behind her ear and smiled. “I know.”

“Grant…”

He kissed her again. Closing her eyes, she let him kiss her because they’d already said everything they needed to for now.


End file.
